Free The Fallen by Jassy Mackenzie Page B

board flooring, the cleaner gave no sign she had heard her.
    Looking more closely at the door, Jade now saw the wood surrounding the lock was splintered, as if it had been forced.
    Inside … Jade’s breath quickened and she blinked rapidly as she took in the gruesome scene.
    The body of a young woman was sprawled face up on the floor in front of the bed, her arms outstretched, her head half covered by the duvet. The floorboards were stained dark with blood and the pale bed linen was covered with deep-red splashes and streaks.
    And the corpse … Jade steeled herself for a closer look, realising her hands were cold and her heart was hammering.
    The wounds must have been made by a knife. One long, deep cut had slashed right through her pink T -shirt and sliced her stomach wide open, the wound exposing a bloody mess of innards. A smaller stain on her left breast showed Jade where the only other visible cut had been inflicted.
    Looking around the tidy room, Jade could see no sign of the weapon that had been used to kill her.
    Then she heard herself give a small, involuntary moan as the awful truth hit her.
    This little bedsit was neat. The covers might be blood-stained, but there were no half-empty bottles of mayonnaise on the windowsill and the window itself was shaded by a new-looking bamboo blind, not by curtains.
    This was not Monique’s room, as she had first assumed. Looking further down the corridor she could see that Monique’s wooden door was shut tight, the way they had left it last night. In fact, since Monique clearly hadn’t been alerted by the Zulu woman’s screaming, Jade doubted whether she had even come home.
    This was the room next door.
    Stepping forward carefully to avoid a dark, sticky-looking pool of blood, she took hold of the top of the duvet and carefully teased it away from the corpse. To her dismay, she found herself staring into the lifeless eyes of the woman she had last seen alive the day before; the scuba-diving instructor she now realised she had come to regard as a friend.
    Amanda Bolton.

13
    Detective Inspector Pillay from the Richards Bay investigation unit reminded Jade of a startled fawn. She had no idea they made detectives so young these days, so wide-eyed, or indeed so slim. He barely looked out of his teens, although she knew he must be in his mid-twenties at least.
    At any rate, she didn’t place a whole lot of confidence in the slender, olive-skinned, smooth-jawed man who, after having instructed his even younger-looking black assistant to cordon off the corridor on both sides of the door with a brand-new roll of yellow crime-scene tape, was now approaching Amanda’s corpse as cautiously as if it might bite.
    Although inexperienced, the crime-investigation unit had certainly been prompt. They had arrived within a few minutes of Jade dialling 10111, and an ambulance had arrived shortly afterwards.
    The first thing Jade had done was to run back to the chalet and wake David. He had been fast asleep on the couch in an uncomfortable-looking position that she was sure his back would start telling him all about later in the day.
    He’d frowned when he saw her, struggling into a sitting position, and she knew he was going to ask where on earth she had been.
    She’d pre-empted his questions by telling him, rather breathlessly, to call the emergency services and then get his arse over to the staff quarters as fast as he could, because there had been a murder.
    Then she’d run straight back to the scene of the crime, where she had helped the cleaner to her feet and led her gently back to her own room at the end of the passage. There, Jade sat her down on her bed and made her a big mug of strong, sweet tea.
    The woman, whose name Jade learnt was Nosipho, was still trembling from head to toe. She held the mug of tea in both hands and sipped it carefully, staring at the wall with the blank gaze of somebody who had seen too much.
    At the sound of approaching sirens, she’d hurried